Legislature Gives Malloy Greater Authority Over Budget

After an intense
and highly partisan debate, the state Senate early this morning gave final
legislative approval to a bill that provides Gov. Dannel P. Malloy with greater
authority to cut programs and state employees in the face of a $1.6 billion
budget gap.

The 21 to 14 vote came just before 2:30 a.m., hours into a new fiscal year. The
House of Representatives had approved the bill shortly after midnight.

"Our goal has been achieved: Connecticut has a budget in place that is
balanced honestly, with no gimmicks,'' Malloy said in a statement issued
immediately after the vote. "To be clear, that's not a reason to
celebrate. The $1.6 billion deficit we just closed involves a lot of pain for a
lot of people in the form of thousands of layoffs and deep spending cuts. But
putting Connecticut on firm fiscal footing - which is what we've done - sends
an important, much-needed message to the business community and to Wall
Street. Now people will know we're serious about getting our fiscal house
in order, and now we can re-focus our attention on job creation."

Though
the measure was sharply curtailed from what Malloy initially sought, it was
still too much for some Republican lawmakers, who said it amounts to a power
grab by one branch of government at the expense of another.

"Our country is built on laws, not individuals,'' said Sen. Kevin Kelly,
R-Stratford. "We abandoned the king."

Malloy had initially proposed extraordinary budget-cutting powers for the next
two years as he works to close the looming budget gap, but his fellow Democrats
cut that time frame to three months.

Sen. Edward Meyer, a Democrat from Guilford, said he had come to Hartford
prepared to vote against the bill. "I viewed that bill in that version as
a totally unacceptable and extraordinary usurpation of the legislature by the
executive [branch],'' he said. 'And I intended to vote no on it...However,
through great efforts by the majority party...great and significant changes
were made in this bill."

Senate
President Don Williams said the bill gives the governor "the flexibility
to get the job done" while retaining some measure of legislative
oversight. "We do have the ability when the governor releases his plan, to
discuss...changes, substitutions, to hold a public hearing, if we believe that
some of the cuts proposed by the governor are grievous enough," he said.

"This
is the right thing to do, this is the responsible thing to do,'' Williams
added. "This preserves our constitutional authority and accountability and
it does what the people of the state of Connecticut want..making the tough
choices, balancing the budget now."

But, one by one, Republicans stood up and spoke against the measure. They
invoked the U.S. Constitution, the Charter Oak and the principles of separate
but equal branches of government.

Sen. Scott Frantz, a Republican from Greenwich, asked his fellow members to
imagine a scenario in which the governor had interfered in the workings of the
judicial branch. "We wouldn't dream of doing that,'' he said But in his
view, the legislature's decision to cede fiscal authority to the governor
amounts to "the exact same thing."

The vote capped
a hectic day at the Capitol. The House gavelled in around 11 a.m. and almost
immediately adjourned to caucus. The Senate convened at mid-afternoon and took
up a bill that would have taken the first steps toward changing collective bargaining
rules in the state. That proposal, which would have overhauled the way state
employees' pensions are calculated among other changes, was backed by Malloy.
It handily cleared the Senate on a largely bipartisan vote, but was blocked
from the House by that chamber's Democratic leaders.

"While I
think the House should've taken up the labor reforms I proposed, I'm glad we've
at least started the conversation in a real way,'' Malloy said in his
statement. "We need to make the relationship between the state and our
employee base sustainable, something it currently is not. Whether through
collective bargaining or the legislative process, or by some other means, this
issue of how we compensate our state employees isn't going away."

While the
special session clarified some aspects of the state's fiscal picture, one key
piece remains unsettled. That's because state employees last week rejected a
series of concessions designed to save the $1.6 billion. While the majority of
unionized state employees backed the deal, enough voted no to scuttle the plan
under union rules.

Throughout the
debates on Thursday and Friday morning, lawmakers expressed hope that the
unions could somehow ratify the agreement -- and do it quick enough -- mass
layoffs could be staved off. Under the legislation approved Friday, the
agreement between the unions and the Malloy administration will be extended
until Aug. 31.

"I've been
asked many times over the past few days about rumors regarding [the unions] and
what they might or might not do, so let me be clear,'' Malloy said. "If
they choose to ratify the agreement that was recently turned down, and if they
do so in a timely fashion, much of the pain that's been inflicted over the past
few days can be reversed. If they end up not ratifying the agreement,
then the budget we now have in place is the one we'll live with for the next
two years."

At one point
during the discussion in the Senate, an emotional Sen. Toni Harp stood up and
urged everyone to remember that thousands of state workers could soon be out of
work. "Seventy-five hundred people who count on their job, we have a sense
of service to this state, won't have it anymore,'' said Harp, a Democrat from
New Haven. "I thought I should at least say I respect the chaos that it's
going to cause in their lives.''

Senate
Republican Leader John McKinney said he empathizes with those state workers who
could wind up unemployed. But, McKinney noted that "in March, 6,000 people
lost their jobs in the private sector in Connecticut. Where was the hue and
outcry from this legislature when that happened? Are the 6,000 people who lost
their jobs who aren't state employees somehow less important than the ones who
are? Shame on us for thinking that."

We elect reperesentatives to speak for all of us. By giving Malloy the authority to do what he wants with our money is ridiculous! He's becoming a dictator and it looks like he's screwing the prople that elected him. What concessions has he and his office given? Have they taken a cut in pay and reduction of office size? The public needs to know that he is doing his share before we all move to another state. By the way, I am not a state worker. For those who complain about the benefits that state workers receive, you need the history behind those benefits. Initially, state workers made very little money and so benefits lured people into those jobs.

"Our goal has been achieved: Connecticut has a budget in place that is balanced honestly, with no gimmicks,'' Malloy said in a statement issued immediately after the vote." I agree with this statement.

The State workers are way behind about what is going on, and their minds need refreshing. They need to move to California or New York.